for 13 November 1996. Updated every WEDNESDAY.

IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE John Lasseter, director of Toy Story and Pixar's second feature, "Bugs": "We'll keep making the movies we want to see. Every film Pixar does, whether I direct it or not, is going to be a heartwarming story. That's the essence of what we do." [Variety, 10/30/96]

	NATURE... "[Biologist Stanley] Sessions said that the sudden upsurge in deformed frogs could be caused by an increase in the fluke population - or could be the result of the growing number of students hunting for "mutant" amphibians for high school science projects." [San Francisco Examiner, 10/21/96] PLUS NURTURE... "Bay Area kids are more familiar with Budweiser's animated frogs than the U.S. Department of Forestry's Smokey the Bear, according to a study released by a Berkeley research group.... The children were asked to identify cartoon characters and their slogans. More than three-quarters of the children correctly identified Bugs Bunny and the Budweiser frogs." [San Francisco Chronicle, 10/25/96] ...YIELDS CULTURE?

OLD TESTAMENT 2.0 Orthodox Jews are failing to see the laff value in Israeli comedian Gil Kopatch's irreverent monologues... "Wearing a baseball cap and geeky glasses, Kopatch delights TV audiences with political jokes and racy bits, all based on the Bible.... Determined to silence the man they call "the wicked clown," ultra-Orthodox lawmakers dragged Kopatch before Parliament's Education Committee Wednesday and threatened to bring down the government if the comic wasn't taken off the air." [San Francisco Examiner, 11/7/96] ...but, then again, they've yet to have the opportunity to enjoy the theological revisionism of the current crop of American indie rockers, featuring such inspiring lyrics as: "Adam was not the first man 'though the Bible tells us so. There was one created before him, whose name we do not know. He also lived in the garden but he had no mouth or eyes. One day Adam came to kill him and he died beneath these skies." ["Pet Politics," Silver Jews] "And they said in the beginning there were just two peoples in the world, you know, Eve and Adam. Well, there must have been somebody else. Eve knows somebody else - Adam didn't - but Eve did. Too many definition of peoples in the world. I don't care what the people said - somebody else gettin' between Eve's legs." ["Tojo Told Hitler," R.L. Burnside] "Fuck Eve. That was the problem from the start. If it had been Adam and Adam, none of this other shit would have ever happened." ["Boys With the Boys," The Frogs]

UNDERSTANDING MEDIA (ONE PRODUCT AT A TIME) "American Cybercast is accepting paid product placement ... In addition to providing separate banners at the top of the page for sponsors, it integrates advertisers' products directly into story lines. ... 'There are no rules,' says Myers. 'The people who come out ahead in this business will be the ones who think about what's best for advertisers.' And what about what's best for viewers? 'They're a smart audience,' she says. 'They understand.'" [Entertainment Weekly, 11/8/96] Three months later... Six months later...

words Duke of URL pictures Terry Colon